“We need to be careful with this staff,” Tric says, eyeing the artifact bound to a tree. “He had a fixation on it.”
As curious as Heppa is about that, she really must figure out her magic problem before they start experimenting with a potentially powerful magical device. There is also the matter of the bit of necrophage flesh on Tric’s left hand… which would be best addressed by magic. “Do you sense anything weird about the magic?” Heppa asks Aglana, who is a priestess of some kind, after all. “Up by the cave I had some trouble. I don’t know if it’s just me or the area. Do you have any experience of places where merfolk magic goes awry? I’ve experienced such things a few times, and it always seems to be around undead.”
“Oh, yes, certainly,” Aglana says. “Jotha was invaded by undead and my people driven from its waterways. When they came back and retook the bay, the quality of the area had changed. There were all sorts of foul things about. An offshoot of Mal-Ravanal’s army had infested the area. My people had to clear out all those creatures and burn down the things they had constructed. Then they had to purify the water again.”
“How do you burn things down under water?” Heppa asks.
“Merfolk inhabit both spheres,” Aglana clarifies. “Our homes are above the surface as well as below.” The submerged merfolk homes needed to be cleared of skeletons and such, and some had to be repaired, but no burning was involved there. However, the enemy army was mainly led by humans, so they had constructed above-water structures, such as keeps and boardwalks. For dealing with those, Aglana really is talking about burning with fire. “In addition to the human necromancers, there was also some sort of animated armor,” she adds, seeing Heppa’s interest in the matter. “Maybe there was a skeleton inside, but it was so heavily armored that it could not be seen. A death knight, perhaps.” The description reminds the Estbryn elves of the revenant they fought in their own home forest. “Following all this, a contingent of priestesses took up residence in Jotha on a more permanent basis. Both to clean up the area and to help educate more youth, so as to build up a base for handling these things in the future.”
“Ah, so your priestesses can actually clean corruption,” Heppa concludes, pleased with the confirmation. Of course, it is possible elves can too, and she just has not met the right ones or asked the right questions yet. Maybe when I get back home… Although, what Aglana has described occurred over only a couple years. There was probably much less to cleanse than what has built up over the centuries in the Grey Woods. “Do you know of any magic that can prevent corpses from being able to be raised? Or stop them from being raised again? It seems to me that if there is enough corrupt magic going on, sometimes corpses will just raise themselves,” Heppa says, thinking of the undead she has fought in the Foul Fen and underneath South Tower, as well as what she heard about in the Grey Woods. “I assume those ones were raised before, and the corruption sort of re-raises them. That’s my theory.”
“I don’t know of anything that can prevent someone from choosing to raise a corpse, but I do not think you need worry about any old skeleton just clawing its way out of the ground without someone actively summoning it. I don’t know of any instances where undead just decided to raise themselves,” Aglana says. “There always seems to be some sort of necromancer around. Granted, it might be easier for such foul casters to reanimate something that has already been animated once before.”
“And with corrupted magic, they’re not necessarily doing it on purpose,” Heppa adds. Those shadow mages did not think of themselves as dark sorcerers. “I don’t think that with just a little corruption, every dead thing in the area would get up, but with enough corruption probably anything is possible.”
“Even when a necromancer falls, the undead they have raised may still wander,” Aglana points out.
“Yes,” Heppa agrees. “The ones we found in the cave under South Tower were not destroyed. They were just waiting, buried underneath a pile of rocks. Have you had or heard of any issues casting around areas where undead could be raised again?”
“No, not unless someone was actively counterspelling. Usually you can tell if someone is doing that because they will be standing on the sidelines of a fight doing something that is not a direct attack. If you can find those people, then you take them out so that your casters can proceed,” Aglana says, speaking more of battle tactics than magical theory.
Heppa nods. She feels she has gotten as many answers here as she can. She will need to do some research of her own to figure out what happened to her. Current theories include dapper inkcap, inexperience handling magic, or the corrupting consequences of casting through runes.
“As for what the situation is up that hill, though, I can let you know after Ash carries me up there,” Aglana says, circling back around to Heppa’s introduction of this topic.
“What? Oh, should we come too? Ash’s hands will be busy carrying you,” Heppa says, worried about their safety.
“I think they’ll be fine,” Tric cuts in, figuring Ash and Aglana could use some alone time together. Besides, so far Ash seems to be in more danger when around him and Heppa than when not. Except for that one spider, which is no longer a problem.
“I’ll put her on the ground when we get up there,” Ash says, with no reservations about proceeding without backup. He crouches down beside the water, and Aglana throws an arm around his neck. Then he scoops her up, one arm behind her back, the other under her tail, and hikes up the hill.
After Ash and Aglana disappear into the trees, Heppa decides to try to open herself up to the fae energy here. She sits down in the clearing to meditate in the way Ruthiel taught her back in Wesmere. She felt something earlier when Aglana’s watery blast destroyed the skeletons, so she is hopeful for a positive outcome.
Unsettled himself by today’s trying experience, Tric joins her in the practice. The cold and rocky campsite is not as comfortable as Ruthiel’s mossy glade, that is for sure. He also feels like the staff is watching him from its empty eye sockets. After a short period of silence, Heppa sighs. “Well, it was good to practice,” she says, indicating that she is having trouble quieting her mind too.
Heppa looks over Tric’s left hand, but something is still not sitting quite right with her connection to the fae. There is nothing she can do about the blemish. Elvish magic just isn’t working here, Tric reflects. My power can make people feel better… Maybe it can make people actually better. Maybe I can dispel this. It’s just a magical effect, after all, right? What can be done by magic can be undone by magic. I’ve done that before.
Tric starts recounting the sad tale of Mal-Vektor. “He didn’t want to be a bad person. He just wanted friends, but the only friends he could find were friends of bone.” As he speaks, Tric moves his right hand back and forth over his left, as if he is doing a sleight-of-hand flourish. “What he needed were friends of flesh, flesh that pumps blood, not that is stitched together.” The final time his right hand glides over his left, the sickly blemish is gone. Instead of a puffy yellowish-green, his skin is a completely normal brown, albeit one darkened by a fresh contusion. “If only he could have been a friend first,” Tric finishes somberly. He studies his hand, flexing it a bit; it is sore from the deep bruise. “Well, nature will do the rest,” he says. “It’ll be all right in the morning.”
Heppa claps a little, so excited is she by what Tric has done. “It’s new magic!”
“No, it’s the same magic,” Tric insists, “the magic of stories, of the silver tongue.”